See You on the Flipside: His Brother's Keeper
by Rollerwings
Summary: Though he practically grew up at his father's arcade and indoor playground, young Rusty's childhood has been anything but fun lately. He fears his antagonistic older brother most, but soon comes to realize something far more frightening may be lurking in the shadows at the restaurant.
1. Please Let Me Out

**Rating: T** for graphic violence and gore, perilous situations, psychological trauma, depressive themes, scenes of injury involving a young child

 **Setting:** Fredbear's Family Diner, during the events of the fourth game

 **Summary:** Though he practically grew up at his father's arcade and indoor playground, young Rusty's childhood has been anything but fun lately. He fears his antagonistic older brother most, but soon comes to realize something far more frightening may be lurking in the shadows at the restaurant.

 **Author's Note:** The _Five Nights at Freddy's_ games and all canon characters, settings, etc. are the property of Scott Cawthon. This is a non-commercial fan tribute and was not written for profit. Views expressed in this fanfiction do not necessarily match the writer's.

You are free to use any original concepts, headcanons and characters from this fanfiction in your own non-commercial work (fanfiction, art, etc.) if you'd like.

* * *

 _"Please_ let me out!" pleaded the terrified child, pounding at the steel door ineffectively with his fists. Rusty already knew his efforts would be futile; the deep bass of the music pulsing through the speakers in the party room outside was certain to muffle any sounds he could make. Outside, it was a sun-drenched day at the height of summer and by all means he should have been home watching cartoons or tearing across his backyard like any other kid his age, but his brother, considerably older and charged with watching him, had soon commandeered the household's only television set, a large console in the living room, for his video games. When those had lost their fun, Rusty had found himself dragged along to their father's workplace where the better arcade games awaited.

Dropping his hands to his sides in the gloom of his makeshift prison, the child gave one last whine. _"Please..."_ Tightly closing his eyes, he was determined not to turn around and face the monstrosities in the dim light behind him, but he already knew they were there: the unnerving collection of skeletal steel components, facemasks locked in terminal stares and dismembered costume parts that made up the animatronics that entertained children at Fredbear's Family Diner.

 _Why_ couldn't Rodney have set him loose in the jungle gym with the other kids his age, or at least ushered him off to the concession counter to request a lunch? As the sons of the franchise manager, they enjoyed the rare privilege of unlimited dining as well as the coveted key that unlocked every game in the arcade to free-play mode. While those had left Rodney much envied among his classmates and perpetually surrounded by a gaggle of loyal friends, he had been less than gracious about sharing them with his brother.

Certain he had heard something, Rusty finally turned, taking in the sight of an animatronic headpiece staring vacantly back at him from its resting place on a shelf, its eyes half-lidded but still seemingly locked on his small form. It was Spring Bonnie, the diner's rabbit character who bounced across the stage giddily during performances, only he didn't seem nearly so happy-go-lucky as he did during his song-and-dance numbers, with his head detached ominously from the slumped form of his plush body. The child's knees locked and his eyes sealed tight as he lost his resolve...

...And then the door opened, a key rattling in the lock and a blessed sliver of light slicing across the floor and then widening into a triangle as someone shoved the sturdy door inward.

* * *

"Rusty!" From behind the large panes of his glasses, the eyes of the company's young training coordinator appeared almost comically wide, betraying his shock at finding the son of his boss trapped in what must have been nothing short of a young child's worst nightmare. Only a few years older than Rodney but infinitely more mature, Clyde dropped to his knees, scooping up the child who had collapsed to the tiled floor and depositing him back on his feet.

"I saw that brother of yours in the arcade and he refused to tell me where you were, so I knew something was up. How long have you been back here? Who locked you in?" He fired several more questions Rusty's way before recognizing that the child was too busy convulsing with sobs to answer just yet. "Aww, I'm sorry. Sometimes I forget you're just a little half-pint, and here I am throwing questions at you a mile a minute," Clyde corrected himself, using the nickname as a term of endearment. He dug in his pocket for a clean handkerchief, handing it to the boy and gesturing to his dripping nose. "Might want to do something about that." Unclipping a walkie-talkie from his belt, he spoke into the device while Rusty dabbed at his face with the cloth.

"Hello. Hello? Uh, yeah, I found him. He's fine," Clyde said in reassurance to whoever was on the other end of the line. "Yeah, he was still in the building; he's not much of a roamer. Over and out." His grin faded when he noticed Rusty wiping futilely at a damp patch across the front of his shorts.

"Er, don't feel bad about that," he said dismissively. "I can't blame you, what with how scared you must have been. Why don't you head to the restroom and I'll bring over a spare set of pants from the front desk? They keep a few extras there, because these emergencies do happen, more often than you might think."

Hearing that he wasn't the first one to suffer such a humiliating accident made Rusty feel a little better, and by the time he had joined Clyde in the employees' break room, wearing a pair of brand-new blue jeans borrowed from the restaurant's stash of spare clothing, he had managed to put some of the trauma behind him.

"I don't suppose that brother of yours saw to it that you ate a lunch, or even breakfast for that matter?" Clyde asked, answering Rusty's head-shake with one of his own. "I can't believe he thinks you can survive on pizza all day, every day. Let's go get you something better from the salad bar."

 _That brother of yours._ Even at his young age, Rusty had to smile at the training coordinator's thinly-veiled disapproval of Rodney. A long-time friend of the family, Clyde had first been hired to cut their lawn long before Rusty was even born, and, impressed with the then-teenager's reliability and general good nature, their father had brought him into the family business, eventually charging him with training new workers at a relatively young age. Though fiercely loyal to his employers, when only Rusty was around Clyde wasn't hesitant to admit he didn't care much for his older brother's lack of compassion and responsibility.

"I'm sorry Rodney doesn't treat you any better," he said once they were seated at a cafeteria table. "I hope someday he realizes that being the oldest means he's got to protect you, not push you around. Y'know, he's got to help fight off your bullies, not be one himself."

"I'm not holding my breath." When Rusty finally found his voice, it was surprisingly strong and unguarded. "I still can't believe you have _eight_ little brothers and sisters! And I'll bet you never picked on them, did you?" He used the tines of his fork to submerge a chickpea under the dressing on his salad, watching the strange little vegetable disappear beneath the oily mess.

Clyde gave a reluctant laugh. "Well, not exactly 'never,' but my dad sure straightened me up when I screwed up. Let's just say I didn't do it often and leave it at that!" He paused with a forkful of salad greens suspended halfway to his mouth. "Everyone has their bullies, though." He chewed thoughtfully, trying to use his best judgement on how much to reveal to a young and impressionable child.

"Back in high school, there was this one kid who knocked me around a few times and made fun of me every chance he got until I felt just awful. Y'know what, though? It turns out he was just really lonely and had a hard time making friends. He turned out to be a pretty decent guy once I got to know him."

"Are you still friends now?" Rusty asked eagerly, trying to imagine a hypothetical future where he and his brother could actually get along. He pictured what it might be like riding bikes to the ice cream truck together, maybe sneaking into the living room to meet up and watch a late-night monster movie when they were supposed to be asleep early on a school night. _Anything_ would be better than the way he was shut out at every turn.

Clyde's face fell, struggling between honesty and his urge to shield the boy from unhappy news. "We did become friends, but he's gone now. He was really young." Rusty nodded respectfully, intuitively knowing it wasn't the time to ask prying questions. They were interrupted when the doors to the cafeteria swung open, revealing the tall, slender form of a man who stood twirling a plastic grocery sack on his finger, an overconfident sneer plastered across his face.

"Found these in my office, so I kinda figured _you_ were here on a visit to the diner," he taunted, slinging the bag haphazardly onto the table. Rusty realized with horror that it contained his wet shorts and underwear as the diner's security guard leaned over Clyde, his crisp purple uniform shirt standing out in sharp contrast to the training coordinator's threadbare and rather outdated paisley button-down.

"What's the matter, did seeing Fredbear up close make you whizz your pants?" the guard pressed on, pushing the bag dangerously closer to Clyde's lunch. "Whatever happened, I do _not_ appreciate finding this in my office, near _my_ desk, left by some marginal employee who floats between the various restaurants trying to look important and telling me how to do my job."

"Those are a tad bit small to be mine, _Derrick,"_ Clyde said in a tone that approached pleading, casting a wary eye Rusty's way. "A little respect might be in order? I left them in the office so his dad could take them home to launder." He gestured to the child, who was already shuddering in dread, and lowered his voice in sympathy. "He got locked up in the parts and service room, so I'm calming him down. And you know I'm not here to tell you how to do anything; it's just time for the semi-annual audit."

Derrick sniffed loudly. "Audit or not, I can't _believe_ they pay you by the hour to coddle whiny kids." His eyes ceased their rolling, locking sharply on his co-worker and accompanied by a malicious grin. "Then again, you did survive the Great Lockout of 1976, so maybe you can relate."

"Sheesh, can we _not_ bring that up?" the young worker warned, visibly trembling at the memory of this event that was unknown to Rusty. "I was _fifteen."_

Ignoring him, Derrick continued on with false cheerfulness, turning his attention to Rusty. "Sorry to hear about your latest mishap, kiddo, but maybe Clyde here can tell you all about the time he was so clumsy he locked himself in a freezer." He gave an exaggerated wink before turning on his heel and leaving the other two to stare at each other awkwardly.

"You got shut up in a _freezer?"_ Rusty asked incredulously when the unpleasant security guard had left.

"Well, uh, yeah, I guess you could say I did," Clyde admitted, knowing the inquisitive child deserved an answer. He dabbed at a spot of dressing on his shirt, only succeeding in making the greasy stain grow larger. "I'll spare you the details to avoid scaring you, but that was in the days before walk-in freezers had extra handles so you could open them from the inside." He sighed, crumpling his napkin and letting it drop back to the table. "I wish Derrick had never brought that up."

The child regarded his friend carefully before speaking up. "You said everyone has a bully. Derrick's your bully, isn't he?"

 _Wow, out of the mouths of babes..._ The training coordinator gave the faintest nod. "And unlike that kid from high school, he doesn't want any friends. Believe me, I tried. Heh, but that's all pretty heavy talk, isn't it? So anyway, have you drawn any new characters for us lately?" It was Rusty's turn to fall silent.

"Yeah, a great one, but Rodney ripped it up," he ruefully admitted, and Clyde stepped out, promising to return quickly. The boy loaded their empty trays onto a conveyor belt at the back of the break room and watched as they disappeared through the small window into the kitchen. Far off, he could see the heavy iron door of the ancient walk-in freezer, and he shivered, trying to decide whether being locked in sub-freezing temperatures might be even worse than being trapped and surrounded by idled animatronics.

* * *

"Here you go!" Clyde said, handing Rusty some office paper and a pack of crayons from the prize counter. "Could you draw your guy again? I'd love to see him, and we could hang him up somewhere here so your brother wouldn't dare tear it down."

The pair worked side by side in the tranquility of the secluded break room, Clyde meticulously copying figures for the company audit onto various documents spread out over the table and Rusty scribbling away, for once feeling so uncharacteristically carefree at the diner that he let his legs swing back and forth under his chair. From time to time he'd chuckle at his creation until he finally set the masterpiece down and leaned back in his chair to admire it, his arms crossed over his chest.

"Haha, now who's this?" asked Clyde, smiling at the diminutive figure on the paper, its face lit up in a rosy-cheeked grin.

"This," announced Rusty proudly, "is Balloon Boy, only I didn't know how to spell that so he goes by BB. He's really nice and he's always laughing, and every time he sees someone he says, 'Hi!' or 'Hello!', like you do into your walkie-talkie." Clyde interrupted his speech with a burst of laughter but motioned for him to go on. "He's not supposed to be you, though. There's this kid who lives down the street and his dad owns the gas supply company, so he can have all the helium balloons he wants and he's always playing with one outside. That's where I got the idea," he explained, pointing to the cluster of balloons BB was clutching, so numerous that they filled most of the paper.

"Aww, I like him! He looks a little like the Raggedy Andy doll I had as a kid."

"Really? Was he your friend?" Rusty was taken aback at Clyde's encouragement; his brother was constantly after him to give up the stuffed animal collection he felt he had outgrown, even resorting to damaging his prized toys.

"You bet! Now my youngest brother has him," the training coordinator said unguardedly. "And may I give this to your father? He's been talking about adding some new characters, and I think he'd love to see this one. Just imagine, seeing a character you created right here in the diner, walking around and everything!"

"Good, because BB wants to be everyone's friend, so he doesn't just greet you; he gives out balloons to all the kids," insisted Rusty. "Even to the ones who are scared."

"Even to not-so-nice big brothers?" Clyde asked, making his young pal giggle.

"Yeah, even them."

* * *

 _(Author's Note: Observant readers might recall that in FNaF2, Phone Guy admitted he could barely remember the name of the diner, strongly suggesting he never worked there. My headcanon, at least for the purposes of this fanfiction, is that he was assigned to work there on occasion but in an effort to put the tragedy that happened there behind him, he later denied he had any connection to the place._

 _Also, the full story behind Phone Guy's late bully-turned-friend will be revealed in "Nobody's Puppet," a WIP Puppet origin story.)_


	2. The Quarter-trap

As the self-appointed King of the Arcade, Rodney stood at a tall game cabinet, his adoring entourage clustered tightly around him as he expertly maneuvered the joystick to guide a pixelated knight through the highest levels of a castle. He paid little heed to the company's training coordinator as he approached, at least until Clyde sharply ducked behind the cabinet and the screen abruptly dissolved into a blip of static, then nothing but darkness.

"Game over," the youthful employee announced flatly, twirling the power cord he'd just pulled in one hand like a lasso. Rodney glared at him in utter betrayal.

"How _could_ you? I was about to get the high score!" he sputtered, uncertain how much he could argue before word of his backtalk got back to his father. "It took me almost half an hour to get that far!" In his typical impetuous manner he brought down both fists down onto the cabinet in pure frustration, then stepped back and gave the machine a sharp kick near the coin return slot for good measure, earning hoots of disbelief from his friends at his sheer audacity and an impassioned protest from Clyde.

"Hey! A little respect, huh? This game probably cost more than the car I have parked outside. Besides, you wanna know where your kid brother spent the last half hour? It seems he got locked in the parts and service room. Strange thing, though, the door only locks if someone uses a key - on the _outside."_ He leaned in closer, looking more annoyed than Rodney had ever remembered seeing him, while one by one his friends made feeble excuses to leave and slunk away.

"You like scaring the piss outta poor little kids?" Clyde asked, thrusting a plastic grocery sack into his hands, a sharp odor wafting into his nostrils as the bag crumpled. "Great, then _you_ deal with the aftermath. Those are your brother's; take 'em home and wash them." He stormed off before Rodney could get in a word edgewise.

 _"What_ key?" he called out after him, but Clyde was clearly in no mood to argue so he let his voice fall to a low grumble. "I don't even have one, I swear."

* * *

Trudging home with the bag held as far from himself as possible, the teenager was grateful not to encounter anyone he knew as he passed the familiar picket fences surrounding dandelion-studded lawns on the short walk home. It had been a stroke of fortune that his father had been able to purchase the dated but much respected family diner amidst the tract of homes that had grown up around it, which left him with an enviously short commute to work.

Once in the basement of his family's modest split-level house, Rodney dumped the bag and its contents into the washing machine atop the other clothes already inside, then threw in a scoopful of soap powder. After the suds began sloshing around in the drum, he settled onto an old chair nearby and paged through a comic book, not particularly eager to return to the arcade after his embarrassing reprimand. If Clyde thought his kid brother was so great, _he_ could take a turn watching him. Rusty no doubt liked him more, anyway.

The teen kicked at a long-legged spider that had trundled out from a dark corner, scaring the arachnid into a brisk retreat under the stairs, where it disappeared between the slats of a folded wooden crib, stacked against a playpen and highchair. Rodney had been approaching adolescence when his parents had shared the unexpected news that he and his older sister were about to welcome a new sibling, and the weekends after that had been spent hauling up decade-old baby furniture from under the stairs and setting it up in the bedroom he willingly gave up. After claiming an unused storage area just off the laundry room as his new quarters, he found that he much preferred having an entire floor separating himself from the noise he wasn't used to once his brother made his grand arrival.

Babies _cried_ so much, he'd quickly learned those first nights as the floorboards above his head creaked while his father and mother took turns walking their restless and colicky newborn. Toddlers alternated between bursts of screaming and crying, preschoolers fussed over the slightest things and even now, with a year of kindergarten under his belt, his brother seemed to perpetually hover at the verge of tears, breaking down into heartfelt sobs at the slightest provocation and sometimes none at all. Rodney was sure he couldn't have been half so sensitive at that age.

He had tried hard, early on, to be the caring and sacrificial older sibling his parents he imagined his parents wanted him to become. _Let him have the bigger cookie, Rod, he's a baby...C'mon, can't he have your old Foxy if he wants it? You're getting too big for dolls...Aww, look how cute he is in your old pair of overalls, but you were still crawling when you fit those and he's already walking,_ so _much earlier than you did!...Who cares if he ripped apart your old storybook? It's been years since you've read it, hasn't it?_

The adjustment hadn't been easy, but at least he had the ready-made paradise of his father's workplace as an escape, and to their credit, his parents had held true to their word and not relied on their older children for babysitting, instead hiring their teenage grass cutter or one of his many siblings to look after Rusty.

Though he would never admit it in his weakest moment, Rodney had moments where he had truly enjoyed being a big brother. For reasons unknown, when Rusty had nightmares he would inevitably retreat not to his parents' or sister's nearby bedrooms, but to his brother's den all the way down in the basement, where he would breathlessly tell Rodney in vivid detail about the monster that lived under his bed, or the whole colony of them who supposedly inhabited the closet. Those nights always ended the same way, with Rodney graciously rolling out his old sleeping bag on the floor and then listening in the darkness as the child's breathing fell into the deep, rhythmic patterns of sleep.

"Tomorrow is another day," he would console the fretful boy as he drifted off, using the expression his father favored for those days that were so disappointing that the best one could do was to throw in the towel, go to bed already and surrender oneself to slumber in the hopes the next day wouldn't be half so bad. Once Rusty was dozing peacefully, Rodney would be left alone to ponder how a child could come up with such nightmarish visions rather than the generic ghosts and bogeymen that haunted most children's worst fears.

 _If_ only _you'd stuck with your usual monsters and imaginary friends,_ Rodney thought despondently, still struggling not to blame his brother for what had happened next. His father had found it endearing when the child had talked about his magical teddy bear, Fredbear, who could supposedly be seen only by Rusty himself, but when his son shared news of another "friend" he'd never seen before, he had no longer been able to suspend his disbelief.

"Guess what?" Rusty had asked innocently at dinner one night before breathlessly continuing. "Mama has a friend and sometimes he's still here when I walk home from school. He has a _motorcycle,_ Dad! Do you think we can get one too?"

That bomb had been dropped six months ago, but Rodney could still recall the way he had been left unable to swallow the bite of food he'd just taken, his stomach dropping at the implications of the news his brother had shared. It had taken exactly five seconds for his father to storm, red-faced, from the table, his mother taking off after him and calling him by his first name in a pleading voice.

Their older sister had dumped her empty plate in the sink and curtly excused herself, and Rusty, oblivious to the powder keg he had just set off, had finished his entire dinner seated by himself at the kitchen table, no doubt in hopes of earning dessert.

They had been left a fractured family, with their mother making an abrupt decision to leave, not contesting their father's decision that the children should remain with him to eventually help run the family business. Rodney had not received so much as a call from her since, and in darker moments he sincerely hoped she had set up house with "Motorcycle Man" and they were both miserable.

Only months from high school graduation and left feeling betrayed by the upheaval, Lisa had just as steadfastly refused to stay around, moving in with her boyfriend across town against their father's wishes and distancing herself from involvement in the family business. Rodney couldn't find it in himself to blame her for leaving, but her departure left him solely responsible for watching over Rusty, who had been left more tear-stricken than ever by the breakup of his home.

As the teenager sat questioning how quickly his entire life had unraveled so swiftly, the clothes washer suddenly dispensed its suds into the adjacent wash tub. He gazed down as the murky water swirled down the drain, the liquid a faint indigo hue from all the blue jeans in the wash.

"It's just not _fair,"_ he snapped to the empty, cavernous basement. "Would it have killed him to have kept his mouth shut?" Sometimes it felt like Rusty was the little brother he'd never asked for and Clyde was the overprotective older brother he'd never asked to be brought into the family. Where that left him, as the middle child who wasn't quite trusted to take on even the most basic aspects of the business, was anybody's guess.

* * *

Teetering on a milk crate pushed up to an arcade cabinet, Rusty carefully shook two more quarters from a paper roll Clyde had given him into his open palm, then fed them into the coin slot. Standing barely at eye-level to the plush toys on the other side of the glass, the child tried again to liberate a sorry-looking creature from its neon-lit prison.

"Clyde says you've been here longer than any of these other toys," he said, dropping his voice to a whisper so nobody would overhear and accuse him of talking to dolls again. "He says you're a quarter trap." Indeed, the stuffed animal, who had once resembled the eternally cheerful Spring Bonnie, had endured what must have been years of scratches from the metal blades of the claw, yet never once budging from where it was lodged in the corner. The acrylic fur around the rabbit's mouth was peeled back and torn away in spots, revealing two long rows of pearly plastic teeth, and even the eyes seemed askew, giving it an appearance that most children would find formidable. For as long as he could remember, though, Rusty had always pitied the little prize, which looked even more forlorn tucked in among the far more visually appealing animals in the machine.

"My birthday's coming up soon, so he told me I should go win myself a present," he continued, eyeing the diminishing roll of quarters that had been better than an entire month's allowance. "I hope you can come home with me; you'd like it there and I already have Freddy, Bonnie and Chica. You know them, don't you?" Rusty frowned. "I also have Foxy, but he got hurt; you'll see what I mean when you meet him. And my best friend is Fredbear. He's _really_ nice."

Without warning the claw closed around one of the dilapidated rabbit's floppy ears, catching it firmly. Scarcely able to believe his luck and all but certain the toy had leaped into the claw, the boy maneuvered the crane, holding his breath as the rabbit was lifted limply into the air and dropped into the chute. He hugged his new friend to his chest, letting out a whoop of pure joy.

"It sounds like you got one!" Clyde said, passing by as he made his rounds performing the audit. He squinted in disbelief. Scratch that, it's like you pulled the Sword from the Stone! I didn't think anyone would _ever_ get that old bunny outta there; he might as well have been super-glued down. But don't you want, um, a nicer toy? Old Quarter-trap there looks like he's been in a battle with a pizza cutter - and he lost!"

Rusty squeezed the rabbit even tighter, disappointed that Clyde didn't understand. "No," he said adamantly. "He's _real,_ and he's mine." His spirits were lifted by the present he'd won, for now no matter what Rodney could think up to torment him at his upcoming birthday party, at least he had another friend on his side.

As the child walked off into the maze of arcade games, cradling the toy over one shoulder, for one moment Clyde was certain he saw a gleam of light in the rabbit's eyes, giving it a smug appearance, but he dismissed it and was soon back to his work.


	3. Having Nothing at All

_Author's Note: This chapter contains a scene involving (underage) drug use, but it was not the author's intent to glorify recreational drugs._

* * *

Rodney's intentions to slink back to the diner, retrieve his brother and beat a hasty exit back home fizzled sometime before he reached the front door of his house, and he flopped instead onto the sofa in his family's den. If the kid was really scared out of his wits by the same animatronics and costumed actors he saw at the diner every day, he was far too timid to actually leave the building and wander off by himself, the teenager rationalized. Clyde could bring him home.

As for _his_ dilemma, tomorrow would just have to be another day. Rodney flipped through the channels on the large console TV until he found a heavy metal video to fill the profound silence in the house. Not long after his father had set about revitalizing the struggling, aged diner he'd purchased, his hard work and investment had paid off, with the establishment turning its first true profit in months. His family still wasn't terribly well-off, but they lived comfortably and they were one of the very few households in their working-class neighborhood to have a VCR, a home game system _and_ cable television.

Not that any of that really mattered, Rodney had come to realize. Having all those niceties only served to remind him that without them, he apparently had very little to offer in the way of friendship and would probably never be seen as anyone worth hanging out with on his own merit.

Several months before, still smarting from the split between his parents, he had found an old Halloween mask and hatched out a plan to lay in wait for Rusty, careening out of his hiding place in a hallway closet with a menacing roar and outstretched hands curled into claws. _Serves you right for starting all this,_ he'd almost called out after him as the child had fled in a fit of heartrending sobs. The guilt had welled up sharply that night, settling in the pit of his stomach when he heard his brother wailing anew in his bedroom upstairs, yet he'd been almost grateful when Rusty didn't trek downstairs for comfort and reassurance. Scaring his brother out of his wits had been nothing compared to some of the "acting-out" that had landed him in trouble at school in recent months, but he had learned to expertly fake his father's name on his detention slips and for all his dad knew, he occasionally stayed late after high school only because he was part of a supposed technology club that was diligently working on a project for a competition that had never materialized.

His father had been so livid about the mean-spirited prank that had only ended up amplifying Rusty's night terrors that he had immediately confiscated Rodney's all-access key for the diner's arcade, then forbade him from using the television at home for what had shaped up to be an entirely lonely month. Cut off from the allure of unlimited free game play at the diner, his large entourage of friends had proven themselves less than loyal, never failing to turn down Rodney's near-pleading offers to join him on a bike ride or listen to cassettes and records on his family's impressive stereo system.

 _Nothing like having almost everything and yet having nothing at all,_ he thought as the singer of the band screamed with pure fury into the microphone.

* * *

"Wow, this is just like the Dukes of Hazzard!" Rusty squealed in glee, clutching his Spring Bonnie doll tightly as Clyde carefully lowered him in through the passenger-side window of his hatchback, taking care to avoid any contact with the hot metal of the car's frame. "You're so lucky!"

"Sorry, kiddo, but this little hatch is a far cry from the General Lee, and I wouldn't exactly call getting fender-bendered by another car and having both doors jammed tight ever since 'lucky.' Still, I've gotta admit that's a fun way of looking at it," agreed the training coordinator as he scrambled in through the driver's side window, dropping onto the bench seat and promptly wincing at the heat that had built up in the vinyl after the car had spent an entire day in the blazing sun. "C'mon, let's get you home, even if it's only a few blocks."

Just as he was about to twist the key in the ignition, he paused, suddenly overtaken by a cold sweat despite the impressive temperature, his other hand remaining locked on the blistering-hot steering wheel.

"Clyde?" asked Rusty in a thin, uncertain voice, but his friend was already far away, locked on a distant memory provoked by Derrick's taunting earlier that day.

* * *

 _September 1976_

"Thought you said this stuff was supposed to make me feel _better,"_ Clyde said doubtfully, exhaling a puff of smoke into the air surrounding himself and Derrick. Their shifts at Fredbear's Family Diner had ended an hour ago and they were holed up in the back of Derrick's custom van, which its owner had invested no small amount of time and money transforming into a den of vice on wheels. "So when's it supposed to kick in?" The teenager, far from used to smoking anything but tobacco on a regular basis, stubbed out the last of his joint in an ashtray and flopped back on the ludicrously plush sofa seat Derrick had installed in the vehicle, the purple velvet cushions crumpling around him.

"I dunno, maybe you're one of the few guys it doesn't do a thing for," the security guard said indifferently. "Just your dumb luck, right? But at least the price was right."

"What? No, I'm sufficiently loopy, and thanks for the hook-up and all," Clyde reassured him, gazing at his hazy reflection in the mirrored tiles on the van's ceiling. "I just meant that this was a real pisser of a summer, or at least it ended up that way, and as much as I hoped getting goofy tonight would help, I just can't win." Peering out the teardrop-shaped window at the back wall of the diner, he startled when the eight-track tape in the high-end stereo snapped sharply to the B-side, and the strains of a new song began.

"Aww, did he ever love Bowie," he mumbled, barely audible as recent memories stirred of a lost friend and his ever-present transistor radio and headphones.

"Snap out of it, would you?" Derrick demanded, growing weary of Clyde's melancholy and his failed attempt to cure it. "Cheer up, you look like your best friend died-" Clyde cut him off with surprising passion.

"Funny thing, that's _exactly_ what happened," he groaned, sitting up and drawing his legs up to his chest. "I guess I don't like talking about it, with it only being a few weeks ago and all, but that young guy who bought it right in this alley, y'know, the one the boss doesn't want us to mention, the one _you've_ even cracked some jokes about while I bit my tongue? He and I became friends over the summer. I never really told anyone here at the diner about it.

It kills me having to pass by that spot going into work where he got strangled, and there's still no clue who did him in." He drew in a ragged breath of air while Derrick listened reverently. "It was just beyond senseless. I mean, sure, he had his enemies at school, just about everybody and his neighbor, but I never thought anybody had it out for him _that_ bad." Looking up from where he'd been gripping his hands to his face, he shrugged helplessly. "There's nothing like being a pallbearer at your best friend's funeral, wearing your old suit from eighth-grade graduation that you already outgrew and asking yourself if it wasn't just random dumb luck that it wasn't _you_ in that casket. We both passed through this alley, me even more often than him."

"Oh," Derrick remarked awkwardly, using the utmost restraint. "It sounds like you have a case of that 'survivor's guilt' they talk about? Not that any of it was your fault..."

"I dunno," sighed Clyde, his voice growing uncharacteristically sarcastic. "But I'm sure handling it like a champ. Here I am, out way past curfew and stoned to the gills. Boy, am I gonna be dead meat when I haul my sorry self home. My dad's gonna be _so_ proud, 'cause this isn't _like me_..." He suddenly clamped a hand to his forehead in frustration.

"Dead meat? Ugh, that reminds me, can you believe I left two entire trays of burger patties on the food-prep table? I've got to get them in the freezer before Mister Baer finds them first thing in the morning and takes the cost out of my paycheck." He shook his head at his incredible level of distraction while Derrick obligingly tossed him the keys to the diner.

"Tell ya what," he offered amicably, yawning. "Tuck 'em behind the retaining wall in the back lot when you're done and I'll retrieve them in the morning. I've gotta scram, so you go save those burgers and stumble on home, okay? It's been a great night and all."

* * *

Balancing a wobbling steel tray on each hand of the beef patties he had carefully weighed and assembled earlier that evening, Clyde pulled open the door to the diner's walk-in freezer, eager to correct what could have been a painfully costly mistake and make it back home, hopefully before his father noticed his extremely late arrival. Not even bothering to flip the light switch just outside the door for what would be the briefest foray into the industrial-size appliance, he slid the trays onto the freezer's shelves at a clumsy angle that almost threatened to spill their contents onto the floor, then sighed with relief, only to hear a foreboding and heavy _thump_ as the freezer's door swung shut behind him.

"Oh, no." Immediately groping at the door, the implications of his mistake were already apparent. His mind swimming, he swiped his hands over the textured steel of the only way out, already aware there was no likelihood the door would yield to his efforts. It was barely midnight at best, Derrick had left for home, and Mister Baer was due back no earlier than eight in the morning.

* * *

A full hour later later saw a violently shivering, defeated teenager crouched on the floor, hugging himself in an effort to conserve what little body heat that wasn't rapidly escaping through his thin t-shirt. The sight of something stirring at the other end of the cooler caught his eye, and he snapped to attention, recognizing with horror what he was seeing in his state of delirium.

The diner's sole humanoid animatronic, a grim-faced marionette of a character, was rising from the gloom, vaguely illuminated by the dimmest light from a single thermostat set in the wall. On previous occasions when he'd helped Derrick lock up the diner, Clyde had been startled to see the character moving around the building after hours, drifting silently along on its ceiling-mounted track and suspended by nearly invisible strings. Even during hours of operation he had always given it a wide berth, but now he reeled back in fear at finding himself imprisoned alongside it. He suspected he must have already succumbed to wild panic, because even if Mister Baer often failed to remember to deactivate it at night, it had no business stalking him.

 _How on Earth had it found its way into the freezer, and_ why? _Had_ it _been the one to slam the door on him?_

"What, did you come in here just to see me _die?"_ he cried out in desperation, seconds before he lost consciousness and slumped to the floor.

* * *

"Never again," Clyde vowed the next morning. He had awoken before the sun, swatting off a spare stage curtain he hadn't remembered wrapping tightly around himself the night before and trying to recall how he had staggered his way out to a restaurant booth to sleep. Yet somehow he must have done just that, even evading the Puppet character that had come to mock him in what had come close to being his final moments.

 _I must have come to again after that blackout and somehow kicked the door in just the right spot,_ he rationalized, stretching his arms and finding them none the worse for wear despite his long exposure to the chill. Rising stiffly to his feet, he was halfway finished folding the curtain when he was interrupted by a soft whirring noise as the marionette slid by on its track, and he shrank back to allow it to pass by the booth.

Despite his fogginess and unnerving memories of his misadventure, Clyde somehow managed to endure the bicycle ride home and flop into his bed still fully dressed, grateful his parents had slept in and never noticed his absence.

* * *

"Uh, sorry for that, and I never meant to worry you. I guess the heat just got to me," Clyde said dismissively to Rusty once he'd recovered from his reverie and made the abrupt decision to walk the youngster home instead. "Go on ahead, I'll stay here until you're safely inside."

Obediently setting off down the cement walk that led to his front door, Rusty made it halfway to the house before returning to the young employee who was still waiting patiently on the sidewalk, his hands casually stuffed in his pockets and trying not to look as anxious as he felt.

"Hey, Clyde?" he asked hesitantly, suddenly sounding impossibly solemn for his age. "The Puppet was trying to _help_ you." Ignoring his ally's startled gasp, he continued, unable to stop the words from spilling from his mouth. "You know, the night you got locked into the freezer? You were wearing a t-shirt from the local speedway and you were so scared -"

Clyde backed sharply into the mailbox at the curb, trying to laugh off his mishap but feeling utterly bewildered at the way the child had spouted off painfully accurate details about that fateful night. He _had_ stared down at the design on that raceway shirt when he'd finally dropped to the floor of the freezer and bowed his head in defeat, certain he wouldn't make it through the night. Rusty had no right to describe the incident in such detail; it had happened two years before he was born!

 _"How_ did you know that?" Clyde managed to ask, his heart hammering in his chest.

"I saw it at night, I guess when I was asleep," Rusty explained, now less certain he had helped reassure his friend. Eager to reach the front door, he called back just before closing it behind himself. "The Puppet scares me, too, but he didn't lock you in that freezer, and whoever locked me up in that backstage room today, that wasn't him, either."


End file.
